Global Arc

Pottery is the most common discovery on a Greek archaeological site. What can it tell us about the ancient Greeks, their lives, and their arts? This class offers an in depth exploration of the major pottery shapes and styles produced in Greece, studying how and why vases were made and used. Most seminars will involve hands-on work with objects from the Princeton University Art Museum collection. In addition, the class will visit the ceramics studio and learn the principal techniques of pottery manufacture.

Love is a deeply personal experience. Yet, powerful social, political, and economic forces determine who we love, when we love, and how we love. Looking at practices of romantic love, dating, sex, marriage, queer love, friendship, and familial love across different social and global contexts, this course explores how social and cultural factors shape our most intimate relationships. Drawing on ethnography, history, and journalism, we examine the intersections between love and technology, gender, race, the law, capitalism, colonialism, and religion. For the final project, students will use creative writing or multi-media to tell a love story.

This course looks at Ancient Greco-Roman sport, spectacle entertainment and games; its origin in myth, its place in religious festivals, and the increasing institutional outlay on entertainment in the Roman empire. Areas of competition include: chariot, horse and foot-races, boxing, wrestling, dance, gladiatorial fights, beast-hunts, public executions and more. We will also consider leisure activities (swimming, hunting, board games), magic and curses, sport medicine and diet, and gambling. We close with the direct interaction of Christianity with Roman spectacle entertainment and the after-life of the games in this new world order.

Living as we do in a culture that is primarily either secular or monotheistic and in which the sacred and profane are largely kept separate, how can we possibly understand the world of ancient polytheism? The ancient Greeks did not have a word for "religion", nor did they conceive of "religion" as a distinct domain of human experience. Rather, the practices, beliefs, and rituals that we would term "religious" were embedded in every aspect, public and private, of life. We will explore how people interacted with their gods in their everyday lives, both individually and collectively, and how this interaction shaped and structured Greek society.

For centuries, shoes have provided signals about a person's character, social and cultural status. Shoes have also carried religious, cultural, and symbolic meaning. They remain a unique lens through which to interrogate and understand innovation, manufacturing, and industrial design. Recently, shoes have refocused our attention on issues of ethics and morality. Shoes are a window into our personal and collective history and future. Students in this seminar will explore, through the evolution of shoes, seminal interdisciplinary ideas, build and refine their academic skills, and create a measurable impact on campus.

Seeds are ubiquitous. We eat them. We plant them. We blow them in the wind. But do they need saving? Seed saving is an heirloom practice that is as old as the notion of agriculture itself. Yet, seed saving practices sit at the center of an intensifying debate about biodiversity, food sovereignty, intellectual property rights, and the future of our species. This course will explore the oft-overlooked complexity of seeds and the people who are working to save them with special attention to intellectual, scientific, ethical, and practical challenges.

The piano is a central fixture of European classical and contemporary music, an inheritor of centuries' worth of repertory and performance practice. In the past century, the instrument has amalgamated with various genres and spread to every corner of the world, becoming part of rich and varied musical communities. The seminar will provide a comprehensive understanding of the instrument, covering its design (mechanics, acoustics, and tuning) and the cultural contexts that inspired it, the repertory from the 18th century to the present, recital culture and pedagogy, and recent innovations such as prepared pianos and synthesizers.

What do elephant ivory, pangolin scales, and baby orangutans have in common? They are all major players in the global wildlife trade. From discussions of the origins of COVID-19 to concerns about the extinction of the last white rhinos, the wildlife trade has garnered significant attention worldwide. In this this course we will explore how species have been appropriated as inputs into markets, including as wild meat, pets, medicine, and luxury goods. We will draw on diverse fields such as ecology and anthropology and will apply the tools of systems thinking to analyze the wildlife trade through the lens of conservation science.

This freshman seminar concerns itself with the laws by which fictional female lives are told: narratives by which we anticipate as well as judge--vigilant observers that we are--what is going to happen to her next. A fundamental claim of this course is that dramatic suspense problematically takes momentum from gendered laws and cues: when we see a lightly-clad woman, drenched in blood, stumbling from a highway stop we are conditioned to assume that she has been raped. But what happens when a female director 'disappoints' our narrative expectation because the presumed female victim turns out in fact to have cannibalized a truck driver?

This course overviews the science of composting by covering nutrient cycling (carbon and nitrogen, pollution), soil science (chemistry), microbial ecology, and the food/water/biodiversity/climate grand challenges. Local samples will be used. The course will enhance campus sustainability efforts through student research projects. Students will help the SCRAP lab optimize composting practices (e.g. aerobic biodigestor) to process dining-sourced bioplastics into healthy compost with low C emissions. Student findings will be an integral component of a larger NJ DEP supported project to advance campus recycling goals.